How Can Call Tracking Benefit Your Small Business?

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when running advertising is not tracking their results. So, whether you’re running offline or online advertising or both, call tracking is one easy way to track which of those ads are attracting consumers so you can determine which ones are most effective at driving customers to your business.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is the process of putting a unique, trackable phone number in your advertising in order to measure whether or not that ad generated any phone calls. With some call tracking technology, you can also record your calls in order to determine the quality of the call, as well as how the call was handled and whether or not it led to an appointment or sale. Call tracking is a cost-effective method to track the source of many of your leads, especially if your business’ primary call to action is a phone call. For example, it can enable you to use a different tracking phone number in place of your normal business phone number on advertising such as online ads, print ads, or radio and television spots. By placing a different call tracking number on each of the various advertising and marketing materials you want to track, you can determine where each phone call is coming from and measure how effective each of your ads is at driving calls.

What are the Benefits of Call Tracking for Small Businesses?

Along with from the ability to track the advertising source of your leads with call tracking, call recording can provide additional benefits to your business.

Customer Service – Listening to recorded calls can help you understand how your staff is handling phone calls and uncover customer service issues such as an improper greeting or failure to completely answer customer questions.

Sales Training – Call recording can help you determine whether or not your team is asking the right questions to qualify a lead or close a sale. You can use this opportunity to properly train your staff how to effectively complete these critical tasks while the lead is on the phone.

Consumer Insight – Recorded calls can also help you gather insight into customer trends, product issues, and in-demand products or services. You can then use this insight to adjust product or service offerings as well as effectively respond to customer questions or complaints.

As you can see, call tracking is a cost-effective yet powerful addition to your advertising strategy, whether online or offline. Are you integrating call tracking to determine the source of your top leads and measure the effectiveness of your advertising? What additional benefits have you received from call tracking and recording?

Tamara Weintraub

Tamara is a content marketing manager at ReachLocal with over 7 years experience in B2B marketing and has a nerd-level affinity for software and technology. She specializes in helping local businesses succeed online, writing and learning about Google, search advertising, SEO, and social media marketing. When she's not writing about online marketing, you can find her watching cult TV and hanging out with her Doberman.